Home / server / Questions / 319727
In Process
Hugo
Asked: 2011-10-09 06:28:24 +0800 CST

Cannot delete folder with rm -rf. Error: device or resource busy

  • 772

I'm trying to delete /var/www/html but I'm getting this error:

rm: cannot remove `html': Device or resource busy
debian directory var rm

3 Answers

  1. I was having the same issue, I was trying and failing to delete

    /usr/local/tomcat/data

    with the error rm: cannot remove/usr/local/tomcat/data': Device or resource busy`

    until I noticed that df -h said

    /dev/vda3              20G  172M   20G   1% /usr/local/tomcat/data

    that is, I had a partition mounted to that point. Mystery solved.

    • 29

  2. You can use lsof or fuser to indentify which is using this directory, something like this:

    # lsof +D /var/www/html
    • 11

  3. It's likely that there is a process running that is using a file or files found somewhere in the tree below /var/www/html

    try 

    lsof +D /var/www/html

    to get a list of the processes using files in the tree. Sample output below shows that a bash shell with PID 8138 is using /var/www/html/iain.

    COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE    NODE NAME
bash    8138 iain  cwd    DIR  253,0 4096 1982790 /var/www/html/iain
    • 4